R. K. Laxman, whose uncannily pertinent picture-statements brought a bit of cheer to our troubled lives, has left behind volumes of compressed complaints that will continue to speak for the common man.
For decades, R. K. Laxman kicked off a daily morning conversation with and among his readers through his delectable cartoons on the news of the day. Each was no more than a simple drawing telling a familiar story, but came infused with RKL's wonderfully sad irony.
He gave the ever-suffering poor and the middle-classes — whose angst he understood very well — a representative, a witness, in the form of a caricatured “common-man”, whose presence made the accusations genuine and incontestable. “We know what is happening,” he said on our collective behalf. An exhibition, last year, of his 97 unpublished doodles at the Forum Art Gallery, Adyar, gave a glimpse of RKL's genius at work.
Finding a compulsive doodler in him, his brother R. K. Srinivasan had handed him a large scrapbook when RKL visited him in Delhi in 1975. RKL doodled — on whatever they happened to be talking about. This went on till 1991. Restored with great care by techie G. S. Krishnan, they showed how these “spontaneous outpourings” — pictures and accompanying words — sparkled with Laxman's calming wit. I saw in them his spot-on punch, his play on words (one had a large foot on an egg for 'stand on one's own egg', another the phrase 'female dear'), his sharp reading of news, his tongue-in-cheek scuttlebutt on politicos.
These were critiques without malice, carrying a child-like quality. “Not to be taken seriously” he said in one of them. A wacky set of inventions (a cyanide-infested banana and a knife) offered us help to get rid of “unwanted-but-important” people, a mechanical umbrella lifted a hapless office-goer above traffic jams. And there was the “nice, good, non-violent, pleasant-to-look-at crow” he loved to draw.
RKL was prolific and fortunately for us, had a long innings.
Among his gems, however, the ones on political figures carried the most telling lines and remain ageless in their relevance and topicality. You could fit them easily in the day's context. Cartoons or doodles, RKL’s quizzical look invited you to laugh with him and share the funny angle he discovered in the human situation. His works form an enchanting potpourri, one that makes you look up and wonder: “OMG, how did he know what I was thinking?”
